


with her gone, the cold came on

by onegaymore



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- Magical Realism, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Other, consistent writing style??? idk her, some non canonical character death too probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-10-24 22:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20713730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onegaymore/pseuds/onegaymore
Summary: prompt: Les Misérables AU in which everything is the same (or not, that's up to you), but Cosette sees ghosts.Since it's magical realism, her ability is treated like it's mostly a normal thing. Is she the only one with this ability? Or is it common to other people in her life? How will ghosts impact her life?anna!!!!!!! i love this au so so much, thank you for requesting it!!!!!! there are many people who could probably write it better than me, but so far i'm having a lot of fun with it :D <333the title is from a hadestown lyric, it doesn't really fit the fic but titles are so damn hardthank you to voidify for beta and letting me ramble about this au to them <33





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ineedsomecyanide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineedsomecyanide/gifts).

Her whole life, Fantine had been haunted. 

Whenever someone met the child, they would often remark on the aura of sadness that surrounded her, making her seem much older than she was. Most adults attributed this to the absence of her mother, but if any of them had asked Fantine she would have been confused, as surely her mother was standing right next to her. 

If any of these adults had bothered to speak to Fantine, they would have realised that she possessed a rare ability known as fantômevue. In other words, she could see ghosts. 

People with these superhuman abilities were common, but not common enough that they were entirely accepted into society. It was amongst the outcasts, criminals and scapegoats that you found those who could do things just slightly out of the ordinary. 

Prisons too tended to be hives of extraordinary talent. Shunned by humanity, these people, known colloquially as les surhumaines, often turned to crime, and would therefore need guards with similar abilities. This led to a strange subculture, of those who had been trained to hate themselves and all others like them, yet carried a strange pride in themselves as they went about their business. These were the guerriers, members of law enforcement so brutal and terrifying that the mere mention of their name was enough to strike fear in the heart of even the most hardened criminal. 

But for those with a more kind disposition, who did not have it in them to become aggressive robbers or policemen, only two roads lay open: to death, or to Paris. 

For in Paris, you could hide. There were underground communities that allowed les surhumaines to meet, and find companionship with those like themselves. Even if you preferred solitude, it is far easier to hide in a city of millions than a small village where everyone has heard of you. 

So this is what became of Fantine. She moved to Paris, and learned to hide. 

Hiding in plain sight, she found, is often easier than lurking in the shadows. She made a few friends, got better at pretending to be normal. Ghosts crowded the streets of Paris so that she could hardly move without feeling the cold chill of the dead, but with time she learned to ignore it. Fantine almost learned to be happy. 

And then she met him. 

She knew right away that her was like her. His hair was a little too blond, his eyes a little too green, for him to be fully human. But just like a foolish human, she fell for him. She fell hard and fast, and within a few short months he was her entire world. At times she thought she heard ghosts warning her. Don't go near him, a wizened old lady croaked at her as her small group passed an old boarding house. I know his type, stay away, whispered a young, rather damp looking man on the banks of the Seine. But she had gotten good at ignoring them, and it was easy, too easy, to let him drown them out. 

Countless times in the months and years that followed, Fantine would lie awake at night. She would cry, and clutch her threadbare blanket to her chest, and wished she’d listened. 

Why didn’t you listen. 

They were right. Of course they were right. His type, they're all like that. They'll take what they want from you and leave you battered and bruised, homeless with a child you can't afford to keep and the memory of a smile you can't afford to lose. She spent the last years of her life living on memories, of chestnut hair and golden smiles and amber eyes, lighting up the city with innocent laughter. Fantine laughed too, naïvely thinking that she would be alright, that her love for her daughter would be enough to carry her through the oncoming storm. 

As usual, she was wrong. 

The storm hit, and waves she would have once rode with ease left her drowning in debt and whiskey. She lost her hair, and her teeth, and finally her dignity. All that was left of her was her eyes, sunk into their sockets in a manner painfully resembling those of her daughter. Both were young, far too young to have suffered as much as they did. They had the eyes of much older women. 

They had the eyes of ghosts. 

Even in her most vulnerable moments, Fantine was never alone. She tried and tried to rid her mind of the ghasts that haundted it, but it seemed they were to surround her everywhere she went. On the old docks, she was jeered at by sailors, both living and dead. The rooms she used to sleep in were home to an old hag who criticised Fantine’s every movement with her cruel mouth. The streets of Montreuil were crowded with victims of murder and illness, pleading with her help us, help us. It got harder and harder to ignore them. She supposed it was because she was growing closer every day to joining them. 

The hospital where she awaited the end of her life was crowded with ghosts, but at that point she could barely distinguish between them and the few living people who visited her. The only one Fantine could tell with was the mayor. Something about his broad shoulders, the way he carried himself, distinctly marked him as something other, something neither man nor ghost. 

In other words, he was like her. 

So she trusted him. With all the optimism that against all odds remained in her, she truly believed that he would be able to return her baby to her. 

You should know by now, it never works like that. 

Inspector Javert entered the room, and even the ghosts fled. The last thing Fantine saw were his ferocious eyes fixed on the mayor. The last thing she smelt was a mixture of smoke and sulphur, the strange aura of this strange man. The last thing she felt was fear, cold and enveloping like a tsunami. 

Her life slipped away like sand in an hourglass, and she joined the ranks of the dead at last. 

Miles away, Cosette cried out as a sudden pain struck her through the heart


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bruh wtf is a consistent writing style. this is probably bad i'm sorry:/
> 
> also this is unbetad so i apologise for any mistakes
> 
> enjoy :D

It had taken Cosette roughly four weeks to figure out that she hated the Thènardiers. 

It was the ghosts that convinced her. 

They were horrible. 

The ones in their flat in Paris, from what she could remember, had been lovely; nice old ladies who cooed at her and laughed when she smiled, young soldiers who chuckled and called her Mamzelle. 

But the ghosts in the tavern couldn't have been more different. They were thieves and drunkards who crooned lude comments in her direction and crowed with mirth when she stumbled. On this particular evening, a man (who, incidentally, had died at a table she had swept countless occasions previously, passed out in a puddle of his own vomit.) had been following her around as she swept in the courtyard. She’d told him to shut up many times, and was almost at the point of using some of the very bad words she had learned from the innkeeper and his clients, when a sudden sharp pain hit her through the heart. 

If Cosette had ever been stabbed, she would have had something to compare this feeling to. 

She had to pause for a moment, and rested her broom against the wall so she could catch her breath again. The mean ghost who had been watching her must have felt this feeling too, for a fear so terrible, so haunting came into his eyes, and he ran from Cosette like a deer from a hunter. The poor girl failed to notice this, however; she failed to notice anything but her own cries. Like any other child in despair, she cried for her mother. 

Unlike any other child, her mother materialised before her. 

It was hard to tell who was more shocked. Less than a second ago, Fantine had been in her bed in Montreuil’s small hospital. Now she was in a yard somewhere she didn't recognise, faced with her small, scared daughter. This was all a bit too confusing for her liking. 

Cosette, still crumpled against the wall, was in shock. For years she'd wished for this, to be reunited with her mother, but… not like this. 

For what Fantine had not realised yet, Cosette knew the moment she first saw her. 

The woman was a ghost.

***

How do you tell someone they're a ghost?

This is not a question Cosette had ever thought she would need to answer. Unfortunately, she found herself faced with it, as she stood opposite her mother. Fantine wept, possibly with joy, probably with exhaustion. Cosette yearned to comfort her, but to touch her would be to make her aware of her- for the want of a better word- status, and Cosette did not think she should be trusted with that responsibility. 

'It's alright Maman,’ she whispered, ‘You don't need to cry.’

Fantine smiled wistfully. ‘I should be comforting you, ma petite.’

‘We can comfort each other!’ Everyone who would come to know Cosette in the years ahead often remarked on her extraordinary ability to remain smiling, even in the darkest hours. The way she was raised has ruined many men in the past, and will ruin many in the future, yet the mindset that should have been beaten out of her by her surroundings only reinforced her determination to bring joy to those around her. So she smiled, and laughed at her mother's half-hearted jokes, and pretended everything was fine. 

And from then on, it was. 

I am sure that the reader is familiar with the abuse and mistreatment Cosette faced in her time with the Thenardier family. In order to prevent this work from becoming more upsetting than is absolutely necessary, I shall glance over these details, and only tell what came next. For, since the death of Fantine, Cosette found that life in ‘The Sergeant of Waterloo’ became infinitely more bearable. Eponine and Azelma still mocked her openly, but Fantine would spill cider over their dresses while they slept. After a while, they figured out that Cosette must somehow have a hand in these small tortures, and decided that it was in their best interests to leave her alone. While Thenardier and his wife continued in their abuse of Cosette, Fantine, with the help of a couple of the tavern ghosts, drove away customers with rumours of haunting. The folk of Montfermeil assumed these rumours where little more than drunken falsehoods, but one does not play around when it comes to the paranormal. All in all, life in the tavern improved. 

And so autumn passed, in a much cheerier manner to the seasons before it. 

On Christmas Eve, however, everything changed. 

It started with a man. 

He wore a battered hat pulled low over his eyes, and a worn coat in a hideous shade of yellow. Cosette, knitting in a corner, was immediately drawn to him; throughout the evening she snuck glances at him whenever Madame Thenardier wasn't looking. Fantine was absent that night, having been summoned to Paris by the thoughts of an old friend. 

The stranger looked kind, if a little odd. There was something in his figure that clearly marked him as other, in a way achingly familiar to Cosette. Once he received his drink, his hands wrapped tightly around it as though he feared someone would steal from him. He spent the entire evening furtively looking around the room. At times, Cosette felt his stare burning into the back of her head. There was something almost comforting about it. His entire appearance seemed comforting to her, from the soft white hair that fell over his forehead to his tanned, calloused hands. They looked like worker's hands, something Cosette could relate to. They were kind hands. 

And, as she would soon come to know, he was a kind man. 

Madame Thénardier stalked over to Cosette. She towered over the girl like a mighty oak tree.   
“Play.” the woman barked.   
“What, Madame?” Cosette said hesitantly, hardly daring to raise her eyes from her work.   
“That man there,” she snarled, pointing in his direction, “Has requested that I let you play.”  
“Really, Madame?”  
“Yes, now get on with it before I change my mind.”  
Ecstatic, Cosette scampered away to her doll- which was little more than a stick and a washcloth- shooting a grateful smile at the man in the corner. The look he returned was equally relieved, if a little wistful. 

That evening, Éponine and Azelma placed their small shoes by the fireplace, for it was Christmas Eve. A small glimmer of hope had been revived by her mother, for, once the household was asleep, Cosette did the same. She pretended to herself that she had no expectation of a visit from Père Nöel, but it is impossible for a child so young to be so cynical. 

The old man from the bar knew this; he also knew that, alas, not every adult in the world sees this; he also knew that the Thénardiers were two such adults. So that night, when even Cosette was in a deep slumber, he crept into the dining room of the inn. Lying by the fireplace were two delicate slippers, each with a small silver coin within. At the other end of the hearth was a crudely made wooden clog. It was empty. 

Taking great care to stay as silent as possible, he slipped his fold coin into the shoe, and tiptoed back to his room upstairs. 

The next morning, the adults at the inn were woken by shrieks of delight from all three girls, and Jean Valjean smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are very much appreciated, thank you for reading <3

**Author's Note:**

> i've been super busy recently and that's unlikely to change soon, so i'm very sorry if updates are slightly erratic
> 
> comments and kudos are very much appreciated!!!


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